Thursday, May 29, 2008

Massachusetts Should Abolish 1913 Law

JULY UPDATE: The State House will address this bill this month.With all the noise we made about the bill since May it's great tothink that perhaps our efforts were heard & acted on.....:)When gay marriage became the law in Massachusetts the opponentsquickly enforced an obscure 1913 law that prohibits out-of-stateresidents from marrying in the Bay State. Of course this was duringthe Romney administration. In 2007 Deval Patrick was elected asMassachusetts' first Afro-American Governor. The true irony is thatthis 1913 law was put on the books to prevent interracial marriages.The fact that the law remains is a total disgrace.....Let's discuss the bottom line. By keeping this law Massachusettsis losing 100 million dollars in yearly revenues by not allowingout-of-state gay marriages. This means that since 2004 when gaymarriage became legal we've already lost @ least 400 million $$$if not more.....Now let's address the national gay marriage scene.New York has ruled that they'll honor gay marriages from otherstates & countries. When gay marriage becomes legal in a fewweeks in California they'll allow out-of-state gay couples to marry.If you're on the east coast wouldn't you rather take the short tripto Massachusetts then travel across the entire country to tiethe knot ??? Updates to Come...... :)

2 Comments:

Arline said...

1) Massachusetts is unquestionably losing a significant amount of revenue because of our antiquated 1913 law. There are thousands of people who would be coming to Massachusetts to marry if not for this law. And with each person would come their family, friends, colleagues. They'd all stay at the hotels, eat at the restaurants, shop in our stores and spend money here on caterers, musicians, wedding planners, etc. It's disgraceful that we've allowed our previous Governor, Mitt Romney and his bigoted views to prevent Massachusetts from garnering the millions in extra revenue that we so desperately need in this state.

2) MGLPC has the 1913 law firmly in our line of site as a target for elimination. Thankfully, we now have a new Governor with a terrifically different view of this matter. With Deval Patrick in the Governor's office, Sal DiMasi in the Speaker's Office and Terry Murray as Senate President, MGLPC is confidant we will be able to repeal this embarrassing relic of a bygone era. The voices of prejudice and bigotry that defended the 1913 law are increasingly finding it harder to defend its existence. Justice WILL prevail on this issue. Of this, I have no doubt.

Arline Isaacson is Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus